Dick Courtlandt's Boy

Presently the servants brought out the tea-service. The silent
dark-skinned Sikh, with his fierce curling whiskers, his flashing eyes,
the semi-military, semi-oriental garb, topped by an enormous brown turban,
claimed Courtlandt's attention; and it may be added that he was glad to
have something to look at unembarrassedly. He wanted to catch the Indian's
eye, but Rao had no glances to waste; he was concerned with the immediate
business of superintending the service.

Courtlandt had never been a man to surrender to impulse. It had been his
habit to form a purpose and then to go about the fulfilling of it. During
the last four or five months, however, he had swung about like a
weather-cock in April, the victim of a thousand and one impulses. That
morning he would have laughed had any one prophesied his presence here. He
had fought against the inclination strongly enough at first, but as hour
after hour went by his resolution weakened. His meeting Harrigan had been
a stroke of luck. Still, he would have come anyhow.

"Oh, yes; I am very fond of Como," he found himself replying mechanically
to Mrs. Harrigan. He gave up Rao as hopeless so far as coming to his
rescue was concerned. He began, despite his repugnance, to watch Nora.

"It is always a little cold in the higher Alps."

"I am very fond of climbing myself." Nora was laughing and jesting with
one of the English tennis players. Not for nothing had she been called a
great actress, he thought. It was not humanly possible that her heart was
under better control than his own; and yet his was pounding against his
ribs in a manner extremely disquieting. Never must he be left alone with
her; always must it be under circumstances like this, with people about,
and the more closely about the better. A game like this was far more
exciting than tiger-hunting. It was going to assume the characteristics of
a duel in which he, being the more advantageously placed, would succeed
eventually in wearing down her guard. Hereafter, wherever she went, there
must he also go: St. Petersburg or New York or London. And by and by the
reporters would hear of it, and there would be rumors which he would
neither deny nor affirm. Sport! He smiled, and the blood seemed to recede
from his throat and his heart-beats to grow normal.